Rhapsody
by SouthpawSwordfighter
Summary: \Slightly AU. Drabble collection.\ This is the difference-between making love and making music. This is Akiyama Mio and Tainaka Ritsu.
1. Chapter 1

rhapsody (_plural_ rhapsodies)

noun

\'rap-sə-dē\

1. a portion of an epic poem adapted for recitation

2. _archaic_ a miscellaneous collection

3a. (1) a highly emotional utterance (2) a highly emotional literary work (3) effusively rapturous or extravagant discourse

3b. rapture, ecstasy

4. a musical composition of irregular form having an improvisatory character

from the dictionary of Merriam-Webster

xxxx

They fall apart somewhere between the drum break and the repetition of the original refrain. It's a subtle sort of disaster that begins with Ritsu and propagates onward. By the third measure, Yui can't quite play her riff fast enough to the new tempo and tapers off looking confused. Mio effortlessly follows Ritsu, though her brow furrows noticeably and she spares a quick glance behind her. Azusa, subdividing religiously to the starting tempo, does not notice that she's out of sync with the bass line until their mistimed chords jar against each other. And Mugi stagnates, unsure which beat to follow.

They both drop out until only Ritsu and Mio are left playing. Despite everything, the rhythm section is still together, and Azusa can't help but wonder how it still sounds good even though they've strayed so far from their starting speed. She has no idea how Mio does this—consistently keeping up with Ritsu's unprecedented and unpredictable tempo changes.

"At least Ricchan and Mio-chan can play together," Yui comments, sneaking a cookie when she thinks her fellow guitarist isn't looking.

"Um, that's not the point," Azusa says, exasperated a little with their drummer, but more so by how quickly their lead guitarist gravitates toward the sweets on the table. "All of us need to be able to stay together. Maybe… maybe we should practice with a metronome."

Ritsu glowers at her as if she has said a dirty word.

"W-well, I mean, it's just that you keep losing the beat, Ritsu-senpai," she says tentatively. "Are you subdividing?"

Ritsu glares some more at her before turning an accusing gaze on the bassist. "Mio, have you been teaching her what to say?"

"No," Mio answers simply. "Anyone slightly versed in music would know what to say to you."

"It might not be enough if you're only counting quarter notes," Azusa continues doggedly, "If you subdivide with eighth-notes there'll be more integrity in the beat."

"Eh, I'm not really counting at all…" the drummer admits a little sheepishly. "I'm just kind of… feeling it."

"You're not counting?" the guitarist is horrified. "How do you expect us to stay together then? We can't play like that! The drums are the foundation of the rhythm, you should know how important that is!"

Ritsu tries for an awkward grin as she scratches the back of her head.

"Azusa."

The call comes from Mio, and she immediately feels a little abashed over her outburst.

"A little tempo fluctuation is normal and probably not very noticeable. Since Ritsu's the one responsible for the pulse, we have to listen and follow her, even when she rushes. As long as we can stay together with the drums, we'll all end together, which is the most important thing."

"It's good to be adaptable. We won't have a metronome when we perform," Mugi chips in, procuring a handkerchief from nowhere and handing it to Yui, who has meandered back to the group, finishing her third cookie.

"The audience won't notice if our tempo changes a little. We should listen to each other in addition to counting," Mio finishes.

Azusa is quiet as she listens to Mio. "You're right," she concedes to both upperclassmen.

Mugi nods in encouragement, Mio smiles at her, and Yui pats her head, getting cookie crumbs in her hair.

"But she's right, Ritsu," Mio says quite sternly, turning around as Ritsu sinks a little in her seat behind the toms, "Even if you're not counting in your head, you have to feel the pulse and _stay with it_. We can't start at allegro and end at prestissimo."

xxxx

She falls in love with music young—before Ritsu's harmonica, before finding her father's old acoustic guitar, before hearing her mother sing, _really_ sing, and not just hum lullabies to lull her to sleep—when she's in elementary school.

It's not the sound of castanets that captures her the way it did Yui, but instead little reverberating wooden xylophones and felt-covered mallets. And as she sits there in music class, listening to the last vestiges of the dilapidated chiming echo off she realizes in a rush that it's gone. The music is gone and over and she doesn't know how it had happened, and how to make it happen again.

Ritsu, completely oblivious to this dilemma, is sitting in the row behind her and to the left. She knows this because that's where the poke comes from. "Mio-chan. Mio-chan!"

Mio resolutely ignores her and thinks that there must be some way that such beauty is recorded in order to be replicated. She resolves to go to the library that afternoon just as Ritsu, unhappy with being ignored, reaches over and drums on her head with the mallets.

It's all in some exotic code, she realizes, when she first sees written music. So fitting, that these musicians and composers would so carefully guard their secrets. But sheet music is beautiful, like hieroglyphics: some notes white and some black, some round and fat, and others with sharp flared tails.

Ritsu as is her wont, follows her to the library. And while Mio loses herself between ledger lines and single bars, dreaming of a day when it will all make sense, Ritsu lays on her stomach and flips through the most colorfully obnoxious books she can find, looking longer at the pictures than the words.

And on one such afternoon, "Hey hey, what's that?"

She starts, and turns her head slightly to see that Ritsu is bent over, hands on knees, peering over her shoulder.

"That," she lifts a hand from where it's resting on her knee and pokes the book, "What's that?"

"A fermata," Mio replies.

"Fermata," Ritsu repeats, testing the word out. "What's it mean?"

"It's like a hold."

The headlock is a bit unexpected and everything but appreciated.

"No," Mio grates out, pulling at her friend's elbow to give herself more breathing room, "Not like a chokehold."

"Eh?"

"It means you get to play the note for as long as you want. Or if it's over a rest, then you get to be quiet for as long as you want."

Ritsu likes this, has always liked the sound of independence. "So I could hold a note for like…" she trails off and imagines the longest time span she can, "an hour?"

Mio pauses to think and consults the book as a reference again. There is nothing that says contrary. "…I guess."

She looks up at Ritsu who is already fidgeting from foot to foot. "But wouldn't you get bored, Ricchan?"

"Me? Of course not!"

It's on the way back to their houses that Ritsu comes up with a new game.

"Let's play pretend, Mio-chan!" she calls from a few yards away, having run ahead as usual.

Mio is pulling along a small wagon that an hour ago held all of Ritsu's overdue library books. The back left wheel squeaks along rhythmically, interrupted only occasionally by the imperfections on the sidewalk.

"Play pretend?" she echoes.

"Yeah, pretend!" Ritsu sprints back to her side and steps along with her. "I'm a musician, and you're a fermata."

Ritsu has stopped moving and turns now to face her fully. Mio recognizes the look in Ritsu's eye. She drops the handle of the wagon and makes a desperate dodge.

She isn't fast enough, and they both tumble to the grass, Ritsu's arms choking the life out of her in a bone-crushing, asphyxiating hug.

"Hehehe!" she sounds positively gleeful. "I can hold you for as long as I want!"

The pun is stupid and awful, and only Ritsu would distort musical terms to torture her.

Five minutes is four minutes and fifty-seven seconds too long. Fittingly, Mio doesn't think Ritsu should ever be a musician, and feels deeply sorry for any fermata that has the misfortune of meeting the shorthaired girl.

Ritsu kneels in the grass next to her, silly grin still not quite gone, patting her head consolingly. "Hey, at least it wasn't an hour."

"It hurt, Ricchan," Mio pouts.

Mio is unbearably, heart-wrenchingly adorable when she pouts.

To show she is properly sorry, Ritsu lets Mio sit in the red wagon and proceeds to pull it along. She is still thinking about fermatas. "So whaddya do with it if you're playing with someone?"

It's awfully nice of Ritsu to give her a ride in the wagon, even after nearly choking her, and even when she is fixated on the most random of things, so Mio contemplates this. "I guess you decide beforehand how long the fermata is going to be." She extends her legs full length and taps them on the passing ground.

Six squeaks later: "Hey, Mio."

"Yeah, Ritsu?" she reaches out to snag a daisy from the grass. The center is yellow like Ritsu's headband.

"How does forever sound?"

At first Mio doesn't understand. Then she remembers that when something catches Ritsu's attention it preoccupies the girl for hours, even days, afterward. Mio herself is an example of this, though the usual time limit has long since expired.

The daisy falling to the ground, Mio turns around so she faces forward and looks at the grass stains on the back Ritsu's shirt. "Alright. Forever."

She thinks she likes the sound of that.

xxxx

Ritsu is browsing through Mio's collection of manga, pulling them from the shelf and stacking them on top of each other on the ground and making a general mess of things.

"You're cleaning that up when you're done, you know."

Vaguely, Ritsu wonders how Mio knows what she's doing when the other girl hasn't even looked up from the music magazine that was waiting in the mailbox when they arrived at Mio's house after school. She is contemplating the possibility of Mio having eyes in the back of her head or extraordinary peripheral vision while watching as the bassist's long slim fingers turn a page. Mio makes an appreciative face as she pauses. Ritsu wonders if there's some half-naked cute boy in an advertisement on that page.

"Let's go to the lake tomorrow," she announces, turning back to the bookshelf and wrinkling her nose as she plucks out something disgustingly pastel colored. "The one with the boats that you can rent. Do you think we should get a canoe or a paddleboat?" she slides the offending item—complete sugary fairytale—back into place with a grimace.

"Paddleboat. There's less of a chance of you tipping us over."

"But I've kind of always wanted to try actually _paddling_, you know. Not just pedaling. You have bikes for that."

"You're the one who asked for my opinion," Mio comments mildly, still looking at the same page.

Giving up her search for good literature, Ritsu walks over and bends over Mio's shoulder, interest piqued. She can smell the papery plastic of a new magazine. There is no cute boy on the page at all. Mio is staring at an advertisement for a bass.

Ritsu snickers. "You dork."

But to be honest, it's a very nice bass. It's shiny and glossy black with a flame motif spiraling from the below the bridge up the fingerboard.

She leans closer. "How many strings does that have?"

"Five," comes the answer, and the page flips. "It doesn't matter. It's not left-handed anyway."

"More like, it's too risqué for you," Ritsu jibes, "Everyone knows flames are sexy."

Mio flushes just a bit. "Whatever. I like my own bass."

"Yeah, but you were staring for a good two minutes."

"There's nothing wrong with looking," is the protest, and the blush doesn't subside.

"I think that bass would go pretty well with that maid outfit Sawa-chan made. We both know you could play right-handed if you really wanted, and I bet it'd really enhance the appeal and …"

Now, for certain, Mio blushes. She closes the magazine and tosses it over her shoulder into her friend's face. Ritsu feigns grievous injury as she lays on the ground inert. How unfortunate, Mio thinks, that her mouth still moves.

"Lake lake lake," she chants, "We're going to the lake tomorrow!"

"You're excited."

"Of course! It's summer! We have to do fun things!"

"And school only got out today…"

"If you think like that, time will pass before you know it. You should spend each day like it's your last!"

"And that'll be your excuse all next year for why you don't do your homework."

Ritsu's retort dies when she turns towards Mio and catches sight of the clock. "Agh! I'm supposed to be home already!"

She scoops her things from the ground and dashes to the door, pausing when she swings it open. Mio is observing her as if this is—and it is—a common occurrence. "Leave everything to me! You just bring the food. Bring tasty stuff!"

"Food?"

"For the picnic, of course!"

Mio listens as Ritsu stomps down the stairs—two at a time, from the sound of it—and hears the gate swing shut. She picks up the discarded magazine from the ground to place it on her desk. Standing up and moving over, she nearly trips over something when she stubs her toe. Looking down at a pile of books on the floor, she growls in the back of her throat, "Ritsu…"

xxxx

The first time that Mugi composes one of their pieces is also the last.

The entire situation comes about from one of Ritsu's remarks about Mio's lyrics on an ordinary afternoon. Instead of her usual reactions to the drummer's comments—insulted embarrassment or self-righteous anger—their lyricist looks pensively at the piece of notebook paper most recently rejected by the club president.

Then she turns to the pianist. "Mugi, why don't you try composing something for us?"

"Me? Oh, but I couldn't. I'm not really good at that sort of thing…" Mugi's declination is polite and modest as she continues placing the pastries in the hand-woven basket in the most aesthetically pleasing arrangement.

"Why not?" Ritsu demands, taking a muffin and forcing Mugi to shift the sweets accordingly to retain proper symmetry. "You help Mio all the time with our music."

"Just with some minor details, but—"

"Chew with your mouth closed, Ritsu."

"—I don't think I could come up with anything fitting from scratch. I'm a classical musician," the blonde finishes pleasantly.

The drummer waves her hand dismissively, a gesture that threatens to knock out the approaching Yui, enticed by the smell of sugar and brewing tea. She waits until she finishes swallowing before speaking because Mio's eyes are still on her.

"Doesn't matter! Music is music! We could always do with something different. Am I right or what, Yui?"

"Hmmmm," Yui says, torn between either the biscotti or the scone.

"Hey, are you listening to me, Yui? Oy! Yui!"

As Ritsu endeavors to capture the guitarist's attention, Mio looks up gratefully as Mugi pours her tea and smiles encouragingly. "Just try your best, Mugi," she says.

To save Yui the dilemma of making a choice, Mugi loads her plate with both a biscotti and a scone and places it before her. The pianist turns back to Mio, but finds her already otherwise engaged.

"Ritsu, if you've already touched it, it's only polite to actually eat it."

"Are you saying I have germs?"

"I'm reminding you of _manners_."

"You're still afraid of cooties, aren't you?"

"No, that's not it…"

Her attention is diverted from the argument when Yui pulls on her sleeve, smiling in a food-induced euphoria. "I want to see what kind of song Mugi-chan writes!" she exclaims.

"Well, if all of you insist, I guess I could give it a try," Mugi decides.

The next time they meet, Mugi comes with a sheaf of papers. Ritsu snatches at it immediately, while Yui, musically illiterate, opts to instead study the page containing only lyrics. Mugi smiles apologetically at Mio while their club president ruffles through the stack, looking for the drum part. She hands the raven-haired girl a different set of sheet music.

"This was the original composition that I came up with on the piano," she explains. "I ended up separating the left hand into the bass line and harmony, and the right hand part for the melody. I was rather unsure about the percussion, though."

The melody, though beautiful, Mio thinks, trying to sound it out in her head, is quite complex and intricate. She looks at the running sixteenth notes and the compound chord structure, and tries to imagine Yui playing it.

"…We don't have a timpani," Ritsu states suddenly, holding a piece of paper loosely in her hand.

"I can't read this," Yui laments, setting aside the lyrics to try her luck at music instead.

Concerned by this statement, Mio leans over to glance at the words that have stumped Yui. She nearly falls over.

"The lyrics are choral in nature," Mugi explains from her side.

Neglecting to mention the fact that they're _in Latin_.

"What does awp mean?" Yui asks, mispronouncing the 'Op.' abbreviation.

Mugi turns away, missing Mio's flabbergasted expression. "That's short for 'opus.' It's the opus number. It's the way composers identify their musical works by number."

"Opus 8," Yui pronounces, scratching her nose.

"Eight? Mugi, you mean you've written seven other—"

"My part has notes," Ritsu interjects.

No one answers her comment. They are all stunned—or in Yui's case, confused—into silence.

"Notes," the drummer repeats, still not quite believing it.

Mugi refills her teacup obligingly.

"It's very… classical," Mio finally begins, tentatively.

"_With pitches_," the club president clarifies, as if no one understands the problem.

"Is it… too different?" the blonde queries. "I thought it might not work… But I did give it a try."

"Ah, well…"

"_God_, I need some tea."

Their advisor enters the room, looking more frazzled than usual. She deftly removes the music from Ritsu's unresisting grip (it has notes with pitches, after all), and spears herself a piece of cake from the open pastry box on her way to her seat and tea.

"Sawa-chan-sensei…" Yui whines, "that was mine."

"Too bad, Yui-chan. I'm the teacher."

She waves the fork as she speaks. Yui's eyes follow the piece of skewered dessert forlornly.

"_She_ talks with her mouth full," Ritsu mumbles in an undertone to Mio.

"Which is exactly why _you_ shouldn't," Mio hisses back.

Sawako scans the music quickly, thumbing through the many pages and adjusting her glasses as she does so. "It won't work," she decrees decisively as she places the sheets of music back on the table and takes an appreciative sip of her tea with a sigh.

Mio cringes at the harshness of the statement and reaches over to pat Mugi's arm. She is nearly bowled over as Sawako lunges toward the piano prodigy and grips her shoulders.

"Do you think you could arrange it for a wind quintet?" she asks desperately.

Mio's incredulity is matched by Ritsu's, although in a completely different manner. "Oy, Sawa-chan. How come you actually do useful stuff for the woodwind club and not us?"

"What are you talking about? Mugi-chan's going to do all the work, right, Mugi-chan? Five parts: flute, oboe, clarinet in A, bassoon, and French horn."

"Still, you're bringing them music. Yui, that last piece is mine. All you ever get us are those stupid cosplaying costumes."

"They're not stupid. I put a lot of effort—"

"Nah-uh, Ricchan."

"—into them! Do you think you can have it arranged and transposed by the end of the week, Mugi-chan? Please?"

Mio takes this moment to step back and observe the entire scene. Yui and Ritsu are wrestling on the ground for a piece of cake and Sawako is shaking Mugi by the shoulders. To this, Mio responds with little more than an eyebrow lift and metaphorical sweat drop, as such occurrences have become (and this may be truly frightening) much too common.

"I'm sorry, Mugi," Mio sympathizes. And she feels as if she's apologizing for more than just the rejected score. For also Yui's haplessness, Ritsu's behavior, and Sawako's general insanity. For the Light Music Club itself.

"Oh, no," Mugi says and beams quite brightly over the top of Sawako's head. Mio can almost see the stars in her eyes, "It's fine. I'm very happy."

xxxx

She is anything but happy.

In fact, on the first day of elementary school, she cries so hard she throws up and misses class completely. Because school is scary, strangers are scarier, and being away from her mother and stuffed rabbit is akin to torture.

For the next four days, one little girl arrives at school half an hour earlier than necessary so her mother can console her and dry her tears in the car before she is shepherded inside the bright and happy—terrifying and awful—classroom with a horde of cheerfully screaming children to learn fun things like arithmetic and kanji, and be forced to do impossible things: singing songs and making friends.

But because she is an intelligent six year old and possesses the innate survival instinct in all living organisms, Akiyama Mio learns how to survive by the end of the second week of the first grade. If she stays inside during recess, does her work quickly and correctly, speaks only when spoken to, and doesn't make eye contact, the strangers leave her alone. Like a pretty painting to be looked at, admired and forgotten in nearly the same instant, with a sign above reading, "Do Not Touch." It works well enough that she no longer cries every morning, regains her appetite for dinner, and can walk home by herself after school.

Unfortunately for her, Tainaka Ritsu is in her class, and she doesn't bother to read.

Mio adds it up in a way that would make her teacher proud: 6 because she rounds up first, plus 3 for junior high, plus 3 more for high school equals 12.

Twelve years. But school years are different from full years, the time between birthdays. If only she were able to calculate the number of days instead, for accuracy's sake, but she only knows her multiplication table up to 12 times 12.

Twelve years of mandatory schooling. It's more than she can count on her fingers, but not more including her toes, and her mother has already taught her how to count to one hundred, so it can't be that bad. She mentally steels herself for this arduous task and thinks maybe, just maybe, she can do it.

She looks up from her handout back to the board, but stops midway through the action. There is someone staring at her. She clams up immediately. It's Tainaka Ritsu, the girl who sits one seat in front of her. She is unable to obey her gut reaction because she is in class and not allowed to leave, and there is nowhere to go, really.

Tainaka Ritsu. Written with four kanji and twenty-two strokes. Mundane thoughts ease her palpitations somewhat. Tainaka Ritsu. She knows her name the way she knows everyone else's name but she doesn't know _why_ she's looking at her. If she did, maybe she could get her to stop. Mio can barely bear passing glances, but an open stare is completely—

Curious amber eyes study her. Sitting behind Tainaka Ritsu has so far been unobjectionable. She doesn't smell. She isn't tall and she isn't fat, leaving the view of the chalkboard unobstructed. And she leaves her alone. Until now.

Her eyes are bright and wide, her smile brighter and wider, and she's still staring, so Mio can't quite breathe. Akiyama Mio has spent two weeks becoming well acquainted with the back of Tainaka Ritsu's head. And she's not quite used to the other side.

"Hi!" Tainaka Ritsu chirps. Mio freezes.

Everyone turns to look at them, the interrupted teacher included. Mio burns and Ritsu grins.

"Ritsu-chan," the teacher says sternly but sweetly, "please pay attention."

Tainaka Ritsu does not turn around until the teacher asks a second time, and promptly glances back at her once more the moment the teacher resumes writing on the board. Mio lets out a breath and commands her quivering hand to continue writing. Twelve years. She doesn't think she can make it after all.

xxxx

Ritsu gawps at the sign as if she has never learned to read.

Mio is un-amused and unsurprised. She sighs, "I knew I shouldn't have trusted you with this."

"It's not my fault! Who would think they'd be closed today, of all days?"

"It says they're closed for the entire month of July."

"What? Why would they do that? It's summer! These people are retarded at business." She kicks some of the loose gravel on the ground at the "Closed" sign to add injury to insult.

"So," the bassist shifts the picnic basket so it rests more comfortably on her arm and scans the deserted lake, "what now?"

"Change of plans!" Ritsu declares immediately, irritation fleeing as improvisation strikes. "We'll just have a picnic then!"

Mio looks decidedly unimpressed, but does not resist Ritsu taking the picnic basket from her and peering inside curiously.

"Oh! This looks good. Is this your mom's fried rice? What's this? Chicken? Man, I'm hungry."

"It's barely eleven…" her comment is ignored as Ritsu makes a beeline for the nearest tree and drops gracelessly onto the grass.

She follows at a slower pace. "At least let me lay out the blanket—hey! You're supposed to eat dessert _last_, Ritsu!"

After consuming her portion of the picnic lunch in record time and reverse order to Mio's great disapproval, Ritsu immediately lounges back under the shade, relishing in the happy warmth of a food coma.

"Hey," there's a rebuke in her voice, "it's rude to lie on people."

In answer, Ritsu makes a noise, half contentment and half I-don't-care.

"Off." The command is rather imperious.

"But Mio," Ritsu tries in her best whine. She knows it's no good; she can practically feel the glower that Mio gives the clouds in her silence.

Perhaps flattery is key, "You're more comfortable than the ground."

Then she rationalizes, "Probably because you put on a few kilos—AGH!"

A bump on the head and much wheedling later, Ritsu reclaims her spot on Mio's stomach; the fact that she's full and drowsy noticeably lessens the duration of her protests.

For summer, the air is light and cool with hints of a breeze. It's so quiet she can hear the grass rustle. The sunlight lowers itself gently upon them. The lake is deserted, but desertion has never seemed so comfortable.

"This is pretty nice, isn't it?" Ritsu doesn't respond, and Mio can't be bothered to check, but she's pretty certain she's asleep.

She closes her eyes and strains her ears, trying to hear the quiet slosh of the lake's waters.

xxxx

"Ritsu? Ritsu."

Mio is sitting up and looking down at her. Ritsu yawns widely, her head now cushioned on her friend's lap instead of her stomach, and still just as comfortable.

"Wake up," she says, "it's drizzling. We should go."

Ritsu lazily looks away from her face and realizes that the overcast sky is the same color as Mio's eyes. She sits up so quickly that Mio has to jerk backwards in order to prevent Ritsu's oversized forehead from giving her a nasty uppercut. The shorthaired girl holds out her hands, palms up, feeling the light rain becoming steadier. There is a look of wonder on her face.

"Come on!" she shouts as if she has never been asleep at all. "Let's play in the rain! We haven't played in the rain since elementary school."

Mio packs away the empty containers into the picnic basket, disinclined to the idea of purposely staying out to get wet. "And last time we did, we had umbrellas, boots, and jackets."

She shifts off the blanket, watching in dismay as the fabric darkens in the downpour. "We can run," she decides, shaking the wet cloth and folding it into quarters. "The bus stop is covered."

A shoe and sock is thrown to her feet in response. "I know you hate mud, but you can at least splash in the puddles." Ritsu kicks the other shoe off her foot and dashes away with a loud whoop.

"Where are you—come back!"

But Ritsu is already tearing down the shoreline, waving her arms like a flightless bird. Putting the folded blanket into the basket almost like an afterthought, Mio grudgingly trails after her. She wades out as far as her she can before the waterline reaches the hem of her capris. Not that it matters, particularly, as she is already soaked through completely. The water from the lake is surprisingly warm against her calves.

Ritsu, in shorts, is several steps farther out. There is one rock in her right hand.

She flings the stone at the dimpling water. It bounces off the surface, too stubborn to sink immediately. It takes to the air, a large circular ripple spreading out from the point of impact. It hops again. And again. The small white plumes on either side of the projectile like wings.

Seven skips.

Ritsu turns to her, teeth flashing in a triumphant grin. "Did you see that? Did ya? Seven. _Seven_!" she hollers.

Not content to stop there, Ritsu is out of the water again in record time, rampaging past the black-haired girl toward the grass. She takes a running jump and throws herself into a belly slide along the wet grass.

Those stains will never come out of Ritsu's clothes.

Already, the water feels like a second skin, and it's weighing down her long hair, making her bangs stick to her forehead. Mio's observation is the driest thing in the vicinity.

"We're going to get sick."

But underneath the foolishness of her antics—they are too old for this, after all—there is a contagious joy in Ritsu's grin, so Mio finds the largest puddle she can. And she leaps.

xxxx

Numbers are boring, she decides.

It's nothing personal, of course, but she thinks that the numbers themselves would be insulted by how boring the teaching is making them seem. Besides, what if they don't _want_ to be added together? The way she figures, math is an unnecessary confusion. Counting is all one really needs, after all.

The teacher is still _adding_ on the board. Ritsu sags in her seat. Recess is too short and the school day too long. She wonders how elementary school can be so much fun one instant and then so boring the next. The view outside the window is nearly as lame as the droning teacher, so on a whim, she turns around.

Tainaka Ritsu does not often look behind her.

She is eager (impatient), determined (obstinate), and impetuous. Looking back is not an activity she partakes in because it is nearly as much a waste of time and energy as standing still. Moving forward is the only kind of motion fit for this six year old. And nothing good ever came of looking back anyway.

Except maybe this once.

Because, for the first time, she notices the girl. Her face is childish yet delicate, with all the signs of a refined beauty to come in the years of her womanhood. She sits in a way the slouchy, lounging Ritsu could never hope to emulate. Her posture is perfect: back straight, knees together, feet flat on the ground, arms on her desk, and unwavering eyes looking over Ritsu's head. Her worksheet is placed squarely in the middle of her desk and her pencil case lies at the corner with the spare pencil perfectly perpendicular to it. Her pale fingers, quite long and thin for her age, move dexterously as she forms the proper strokes for the number twelve. The slowly turning ceiling fan above moves her bangs slightly with an invisible breeze; Ritsu has never seen anything so black—darker than a starless night—as her hair.

Of course, Ritsu is not noticing these things—she is a child without an eye for details, and poetics are no less fit for her mind than arithmetic.

The only thing Ritsu thinks is, _Cool_.

But for all the attention Ritsu is giving her, this girl spares her only a glance. There is a flicker of grey before the other girl's eyes jump away like a skittish animal.

Her second thought is a jumbled trio of: _I've never met anyone like this before! I want to touch her hair _and _She's gonna be my new friend_.

All of this dilutes down to an overenthusiastic, "Hi!"

The girl whose hair she wants to touch does not turn to her. If possible, she becomes even more still and her wide unblinking eyes fixate unrelentingly on her paper. She could be a statue if not for the way she turns an interesting shade of red when the teacher speaks.

Ritsu turns back around reluctantly. Facing forwards or backwards, she certainly isn't going to pay attention now.

She is forced to stay after class so the lame teacher can lecture her on her poor attention span. It's upsetting because this gives the other girl ample time to pack her things and leave with all the other students. Which means she won't have another chance to speak to her until tomorrow. Ritsu doesn't think she can last that long. So she decides that learning her name will probably sustain her until the next day. Therefore, when her teacher allows her to leave, she does not snatch her things and sprint out the door, but instead stays in the classroom. Lingering is a rarity for her, but she is impatient and waiting for tomorrow's roll call is an impossibility. So she stays behind and peeks into the black-haired girl's desk. She rummages around until she finds what she needs: a previously graded handout with a name at the top of the page.

That night after dinner she shows her father the paper and asks him to read the name to her.

"What a pretty name," her father comments. "Why do you have her math worksheet? Did the teacher mix them up by accident?"

"She has pretty hair," Ritsu answers. She is pleased with the fruits of her labor.

The girl behind her is Akiyama Mio.

xxxx

True to Mio's prediction, they do get sick.

"…Hello?"

The voice is an octave lower than it should be and awfully croaky, so Ritsu has to check, "Mio, is that you?"

A grunt.

The logical conclusion, "Are you sick?"

An angrier grunt.

"…Me too."

This does not seem to appease the girl on the other side of the line. There is something like a huff and barely audible, "I told you so" before she hears a squeak and rustle of cloth and assumes Mio is burrowing under her covers.

"My brother keeps laughing at me being sick. It's not fair," Ritsu stops to cough belatedly, "I get stuck with him and you've got a mom who makes the best chicken soup ever."

Mio cradles the phone to her ear and hides in the dark warmth of the sheets. She thinks back on how her mother had gently chided her for going out without an umbrella and then doing something as impulsive as playing in the rain.

Ritsu carries on the one-sided conversation quite spectacularly by herself: "I can't believe it! The first week of summer vacation and we're stuck in bed."

"Your fault," Mio manages to rasp and reaches for the box of tissues. Eerily similar to the explanation she gives her mother, who only smiles knowingly in response: "It was all Ritsu's idea. And I couldn't just _leave_ her there, could I?"

"Hey! Let's watch a movie together." Her friend's voice jolts her back to the present.

A nap, the dark-haired girl thinks, would be heavenly. "We're sick. We should rest, not play."

"But it's summer!" Ritsu howls it like the fact hurts her deeply. From the immediate sound of her hacking, it apparently had hurt in some way.

Mio holds the phone away from her and speaks to it. "I'm going to hang up now and take a nap."

"What? No, no, wait! Mio, don't hang up!" There is a fifteen second intermission in Ritsu's pleading as she coughs up a lung.

The cold-ridden bassist blows her nose delicately as Ritsu manages to get everything under control again. "Misery loves company, right?"

Mio places the receiver back next to her ear tentatively, but not before lowering the volume to the lowest bar, unsure when Ritsu would start coughing again. "I suppose…"

"So I'm gonna bring lots of movies over to your house, and we're gonna watch them and have fun anyway. Hah! We'll show them!"

Mio doesn't bother asking who "them" is, resigning herself to Ritsu's company. "When are you coming…?"

"Soon. When I, urgh, get enough energy to move." There is a sound like Ritsu flopping back on the couch after a failed attempt to sit up.

A while, then. There's time enough for a nap after all.

"Stay on the line until you get here, okay?"

"Why's that?"

"So I'll know if you pass out on the way." She turns the volume back up and places the phone on the pillow. "I'm going to take a nap. If you need me to call an ambulance, start yelling, 'kay?"

"…I can't yell if I'm passed out."

"Shh. Napping."

"Your concern for my well-being is so touching," Ritsu grumps. Sitting up is too much trouble, so she opts instead to roll off the low sofa onto the ground. Mio makes a sleepy inquisitive sound at the thump.

She reports her progress: "I'm off the couch and looking for movies."

Ritsu indiscriminately shoves an armful of movies into a plastic bag. She thinks she saw at least one horror movie go in there. Good enough.

"Shoes. Now I'm putting on my shoes." Or not. The ones from the other day aren't dried yet. She throws them outside carelessly, hoping the sun will speed up the process. She manages to wiggle her sandals on and sits down on her doorstep exhausted. Her neighbor rides past on a tricycle and a little boy chases him, waving a stick.

Ritsu continues her monologue: "You know, sometimes I forget how much fun kids have. We should do stuff like play in the rain more often. Even though getting sick sucks."

The shorthaired girl pauses and touches the barely noticeable friction burn on her stomach, remembers the giant splash Mio made, and tries to recall something that had felt like unbridled freedom.

Mio, nearly asleep, hears Ritsu's voice from right next to her. "…But it was worth it."

_Yes_.

* * *

**A/N**

Say, is it actually possible to skip stones in the rain? Seems like the raindrops might mess up the surface tension… or something. It appears as if I've learned nothing in my college physics course.

Anyway, this fic will be multi-chaptered. It is something like a collection of vaguely interwoven drabbles in a discontinuous [but hopefully not too confusing] timeline. It has no real plot, yet I'm still trying to work it towards some kind of definitive end.

So if I haven't scared you off, check back [hopefully] soon for the next chapter.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N

It wasn't supposed to take this long, really.

The return to regularly scheduled lectures and structured learning seems to be inhibiting my ability to say something rather important very casually. And it just so happens that this is supposed to be one of the more subtle chapters, for it is from here that a certain tremulous thread, which connects the individual drabbles inside their chapter and across to the other ones, will emerge. And if I do everything right, you should (I hope) be able to see it by chapter four.

Now a few points of clarification: if Azusa doesn't speak and isn't mentioned, assume she has not yet joined the club or is absent from the current K-On insanity purely by chance. And don't worry too much about strict linear continuity, because I'm not. The literal "when" is never as important as the abstract "when" of the timeline of their relationship, which in turn is inferior to the "what" and "why." If you find it helps, think of it like a bunch of snapshots that fell out of a scrapbook or words from a perfectly coherent sentence that have been rearranged by some mischievous prankster.

Onto the second chapter.

* * *

_rhapsody_

xxxx

Their first actual meeting is not in the first grade. However, since that meeting remains the memory that stays with both of them into adulthood (albeit a bit dubiously on Ritsu's part), it is the important one.

But to be perfectly clear and historically accurate, in actuality they meet for the very first time two years prior, in a sandbox.

It happens on an average day in an ordinary playground during that indeterminate time between seasons. It goes something like this: the girl with black hair moves away from the bench with timid, fledging steps on cement heated through by the summer sun. She crosses the wooden threshold—the girl with scraped elbows vaults off the seat of her swing and leaves it swaying in her absence—and takes that last step, placing one foot into the sand. The other nearly trips as she grabs something from the ground mid-dash and passes by the monkey bars—gleaming steel beams arching into the ribs of a great extinct creature—without a glance.

In the sandpit the dark-haired girl can still see her mother from the corner of her eye, so all is well. Her braided pigtails flaring in the motion, she squats amidst the grains of sand. She does not sit because her dress is new and clean. She observes the ruins left by previous creators: rounded dunes, dipping canyons, a truncated cone raising itself half-heartedly over illegible scribbles in the packed sand.

Sand in a child's palms, and here lies the world: infinite possibilities and a never-ending cycle of creation and destruction.

It is her turn now. She smoothes out a small patch next to the slanted pyramid and ponders what she should make by herself. But suddenly, the little girl is not alone in the rectangular pit; there is someone here. She looks up—

It is a person with a bucket for a head.

A small chubby toddler hand lifts the yellow plastic to reveal sparkling amber eyes. Brown hair spikes up with static as the bucket is taken off completely. Now—as they behold each other for the first time—a moment when all is still save the autumn wind that blows between them.

Ah, the very first act, the neglected preface—

Mio goes back to looking at the perfectly smooth sand and contemplates the process of creation with the detached air of an artist. The yellow bucket dips into her line of vision and scoops up the entire pyramid. Ritsu is ecstatic that there is another person in the sandbox. She has been waiting—for someone to play with.

She is content to stare at the one scoopful she has in her cupped hands while Ritsu, snatching fistfuls from the ground, is forcefully depositing sand into her pail eagerly. Mio lowers the captured grains back down, presses it into a small hill, and cocks her head to examine it critically. And at this moment, with the gravity of a priest performing baptism, Ritsu takes the full bucket and upends it over her head.

Ritsu never remembers the day again. Mio remembers for a long time, and in two years it will be one of the foremost reasons as to why she is so reticent towards the other girl's friendship. But eventually, it dims throughout adolescence, lost in a sea of other memories concerning that girl, and then one day, it slips away entirely.

So, although of no particular importance—forgotten and insignificant—the first time they meet, Tainaka Ritsu makes Akiyama Mio cry.

xxxx

"Mio, it's hot."

"What do you want me to do about it?"

"Fan me."

The fact that the clubroom does not have a fan is not the issue. "No."

"C'mon! Mio. Fan me. Fan! Faaan…" Ritsu groans from where she is sloppily strewn over a chair.

The pencil's scratching does not hesitate as Mio continues working out math problems. "Ritsu, I am not your personal slave."

"Tch. How rude. I'm the club president, and this is an order!"

"I'll dump this water bottle over your head, you tyrant."

The way Mio's mouth has ticked down at the corner is noticeable even though her head is lowered over her book, so Ritsu grumblingly desists in her persuasions and settles for loudly dragging her chair in front of the open window, hoping to catch a breeze.

"Now the next chord is a B major seventh," Azusa says to Yui, demonstrating as such on her own guitar.

The drummer turns a lazy eye across the room towards them. Even in the blistering heat, Azusa, determined to help Yui finish memorizing a particular phrase, is painstakingly walking her through each note and chord in the correct order and rhythm—an arduous task that had once been borne by Mio alone. To further her goals, Azusa has donned a pair of cat ears in hopes of retaining the guitarist's attention. It seems to be working, but not quite in the manner desired.

"No, senpai, it's too hot for hugs! Concentrate or you'll forget everything you just learned!"

"I wonder how Azusa puts up with Yui," Ritsu remarks offhandedly, pulling at the collar of her blouse as a meager breeze wafts half-heartedly through the window.

Her friend spares her a glance, but does not otherwise answer.

"It's hard to see why they're friends. I mean, the fact that Yui is a complete airhead is even worse for her since she's got to teach her guitar and everything. And then, come on, the cat ears and constant hugs?"

"Hm," comes the noncommittal noise.

"Must be a pain sometimes. Can you imagine it?"

"_Hmm_."

"Stop with the weird noises, Mio."

Ritsu lolls her head forward to look at the bassist. Mio glances up from her workbook and holds eye contact steadily.

"Don't you think," Ritsu says, glad that she has her undivided attention, "that Yui is getting the better end of the deal?"

Mio rolls her eyes impressively before purposefully looking at Yui, then fixes her gaze back on an uncomprehending Ritsu.

"…?"

Mio repeats the movement again. She looks at Yui, then at Ritsu, and arches her left eyebrow for added emphasis.

Ritsu stares. Then blinks.

"No."

"Mm?"

"No. You," Ritsu levels her pointer finger at Mio's coolly unruffled face, "are not comparing _us_," she jerks her hand back to gesture to herself with her thumb, "to _them_." She flings her arm out, hand open and palm up, the arc of the movement encompassing both guitarists.

Mio raises her other eyebrow.

"We're nothing like that!" Ritsu insists, "I mean, other than the fact that you and Azusa have long dark hair and Yui and I have short brown hair. And maybe I'm a little—but I mean, _you're_ not like—"

Ritsu's indignant rambling ceases as she considers the possible similarities. There is the fact that Azusa and Mio are composed, serious people, driven to become accomplished musicians. There is the fact that she and Yui are fun-loving and given to sloughing off responsibilities with their aversion towards practice and work. Mio might possibly pull her through schoolwork the way Azusa devotedly coaches Yui in music. Perhaps, for every time Yui has embraced Azusa there has been an equivalent of her grabbing, hugging, or slinging her arm around Mio. And if Azusa would not perform without Yui, then conceivably, if Ritsu were not present, Mio would also—

And maybe, _maybe_, just barely, the comparison works. But—

"Agh! Mio! You can't compare me to Yui!"

Mio's eyebrows are practically disappearing into her hairline as Ritsu agitates her chair against the ground, the wooden legs clacking hollowly in a lopsided cadence.

"I didn't say anything," she claims. "You came up with that comparison all by yourself."

She sounds very smug.

"I don't make you wear cat ears!"

"You don't exactly _help_ when Sawako-sensei is on one of her rampages, you know."

A strong gust of wind whips through, but Ritsu, in her distress, has forgotten all about her earlier complaints, too focused on the current dilemma.

"Azusa and Yui? You and me? _Really_?" she thinks back on her earlier comments and tries to imagine an outsider's view of their relationship. Ritsu can't manage it because Mio is right whenever she says that she is incapable of that sort of self-removal and impartiality. She looks at Yui and Azusa instead, feeling vaguely disturbed.

But still, "I'm not quite that hopeless," she objects.

"Well, with your use of qualifiers, it seems you're admitting some degree of haplessness."

Mio has abandoned her homework in lieu of quietly observing a distraught and perplexed Ritsu, and to anyone else she would look as always. But Ritsu can see that barely perceptible gleam in her grey eyes and the subtle turn of her lips, and she has the _gall_ to still look beautiful while smirking.

She doesn't have her photos with her today, so the shorthaired girl settles for the next best thing.

"Hey, Mio," Ritsu's voice is all sunshine and smiles and the other is immediately wary.

"So yesterday, I wasn't being very careful," the drummer looks up from examining her nails, "And I closed a drawer on my finger—"

The raven-haired girl doesn't hear anymore because she gets up and briskly walks away with her hands over her ears, intent on not allowing herself to disgrace her small triumph by cowering in fear.

"I'm not listening, I'm not listening…" she sweeps past Mugi in the doorway, chanting to herself.

Mugi looks at Ritsu, her inimitable eyebrows quirked into an expression of confusion, but the other is too busy watching Mio leave. The other occupants in the room seem oblivious to what has transpired. Indeed, Azusa is vainly attempting to prod a prone Yui upright, her cat ears askew.

"Er… I brought some éclairs?"

xxxx

Looking like you're busy even when you're not, Mio learns early on, is crucial. That way, people are less likely to talk to you because "it's rude to interrupt," as her mother says. For instance, the past two days during recess she has been hiding behind a book she had already read a year ago—her mother being too busy lately to take her to the library—and no one had bothered her at all.

The charm stops working on the third day, namely because Tainaka Ritsu has never and probably will never learn manners.

_Strange_, Mio thinks, when Tainaka Ritsu does not leap out of her chair in a mad dash towards the playground the moment the teacher declares class adjourned. But things have been strange since this morning when she came in to find her desk looking like the class pet had crawled around in it. So Mio pays it little heed. She takes out her book and props it open to a random page in the middle, content to spend recess alone and inside. It is now, though, when the girl in front of her twists around in her seat to sit cross-legged and facing backwards, that all the accumulated strangeness ceases to remain benign.

_Bad_, Mio thinks, when Tainaka Ritsu looks at her and opens her mouth.

"Hey! What're you reading?" she shouts. The teacher, finished wiping the chalkboard clean, pauses on her way out to remind Ritsu that she is not speaking at an indoor volume. But the world is cruel, and the teacher, leaving in a swish of her skirt, does not save the cringing Mio from anything other than her loud voice.

Mio's dismayed eyes follow the adult out the door until she is disrupted by the realization that Tainaka Ritsu is jabbing a piece of paper at her.

She doesn't take it.

After all, she does not accept things from strangers.

The girl does not seem put down by this at all, instead dropping it on the blank desk. Mio recognizes it as her missing math worksheet even through the wrinkles and the funny stain on the corner, so she takes it and files it away in the proper folder, resolving to pretend as if this has never happened. Ritsu does not make any such resolution.

"What are you reading?" Ritsu repeats, positively beaming at her.

Naturally, she cannot answer such a question, especially not when Ritsu's eyes are rummaging in her face the way her hands did to her desk. It is all mildly terrifying. But she has to say _something_, and the only thing that comes to mind are the lines she has practiced at home so many times she can say them smoothly in nearly any condition, so: "Hello. I'm Akiyama Mio. It's nice to meet you."

She is lying, of course, but that is not very important.

Ritsu is so excited that she does not realize that she has not introduced herself. In fact, she will never introduce herself to Akiyama Mio. It may be extraordinary luck or simply fate that Mio already knows her name and it happens to be unnecessary.

She also does not realize that Mio has not answered her question and immediately transitions to the next point: "Hey, you have really pretty hair!"

Mio absolutely flinches, though it's hard to tell whether from the compliment or Ritsu's outstretched hand.

They are interrupted. "Oy, Tainaka!" comes the annoyed call—for this is how all rivals address each other when endeavoring to be especially intimidating. "Why aren'tcha outside? We're supposed to have a rematch today!"

Ritus is displeased. She thinks she is making great progress with her new friend—she is not a particularly perceptive child—so this is not the time for silly games and perceived schoolyard superiority. But she is mistaken. They are not friends. Not yet.

After all, though there is unrequited love, there is no such thing as a one-sided friendship. The latter is critically dependent upon reciprocation.

She does not know this, so Ritsu scowls at the boy in the doorway and refuses to leave for the challenge until: "If you don't, then you're a scaredy cat!" He follows this up by making squawking chicken noises, though it is not the animal he had invoked.

It so happens that there is only one person in the classroom who is currently terrified, and it sure isn't Tainaka Ritsu.

"Ready to get beat again?" she smirks at him as they exit, ignorant to Mio's great relief.

"Nah uh." He is ready to redeem his schoolboy pride, "I'm gonna win this time."

"What do I get when I win?"

"When _I_ win, I want your steelie," he declares, squinting at the sun as they come out into the playground.

Ritsu laughs outright. "Okay. Then I'll have your cats-eye. The yellow one."

It's not a fair bet because the steelie is her shooter and it ranks one higher than cats-eyes anyway, but she likes the swirling yellow band in the middle of the alabaster sphere, and it's the one marble he never uses when they gather around, kneeled in the dirt, and play for keeps. Otherwise, it would have been hers long ago.

With the stakes set and two impartial judges appointed, they face each other in the middle of the grassy arena, and the dare begins. It is an epic battle that captures the entire class, and soon there is a massive ring encircling them, cheering on the two opponents as they crawl around on their knees, pulling up fistfuls of grass and chomping down in relish.

(Years later, Mio will bring up this event at Yui's house the night before the amateur guitarist needs to pass her algebra retake, and at that time no firm conclusion will be drawn as to exactly whose idea it was to bet on who could eat more grass.)

It all comes to an abrupt end when the teacher rushes out to see what kind of horror show is happening. She is not surprised that Ritsu is one of the major guilty parties. But by the time she disperses the crowd and berates the two children on their ridiculous behavior, Ritsu is so euphoric (and stuffed full) that she can't even bring herself to care what her teacher is saying.

"Pay up," she says around a burp and after the lecture, elbowing the loser as they trail back into a giddy, gossiping classroom.

The winner had been decided unanimously by the judges and popular opinion, so he hands over the marble, albeit grudgingly, and goes to his chair at the other side of the room to sulk while Ritsu traipses off to her seat, immediately brandishing _his_ marble under Akiyama Mio's nose.

To the victor go all spoils, and this (is the drawback about glory) begets bitter feelings and enemies.

After fuming for around an hour in shamed anger and coming back from a trip to the bathroom that does little to assuage the developing stomachache, the disgraced boy casually passes by the glass tank on the way to his chair, noticing Ritsu laying face down on her desk.

He waits until the teacher has her back to him, passing out handouts, before taking his revenge. Seated again, he leans forward, squints one eye closed and takes aim carefully, the tip of his tongue sticking out of his mouth in concentration. Then he throws the class pet straight at Tainaka Ritsu's desk.

But there is a reason why he lost the bet that is vaguely related to the reason that he misses his mark by a few feet. There is only one person in the first grade who can hit a target 0.45 meters by 0.60 meters (the size of an elementary school desk) from 9 m away (the length of the classroom). Tainaka Ritsu is the champion of all outdoor activities, eating grass, running, and throwing included.

In short, the turtle does not land on Tainaka's desk.

It hits the back of Akiyama Mio's head.

That afternoon, three children of class 2 of the first grade are sent home early. Saito Shigeru on account of mild stomach pains and bad behavior. Tainaka Ritsu on account of severe stomach pains. And Akiyama Mio on account of fainting, tears, and general hysteria.

xxxx

"Miko, Miko!"

The shout causes one girl to turn. "Hi Suki-chan," she responds cheerfully.

"Want to have lunch together?"

"Sure. Kaori's getting a drink from the vending machine."

There is the sound of furniture moving in the freshman class as the two girls arrange themselves for a well-deserved lunch break.

"Hey, Miko? I've been wondering for awhile, but who are those two over there?"

Miko turns around to look. "Oh. By the window? That's Akiyama-san and Tainaka-san."

"She's pretty, isn't she?" she adds, following Suki's prolonged gaze.

"Eh? Well, yeah, I guess," her friend admits.

"She gets pretty high grades too," Miko recalls, remembering the name nearly topping the list of posted scores.

"What about Tainaka-san?"

She grimaces because Tainaka Ritsu's name had been in the spot one higher than her own, and her mother will not buy her that new bracelet unless she manages a consistent A average for the term. "Her scores are alright."

The last seat is suddenly filled as Kaori sits down, "Vending machine selection? Awesome. High school? Waaaay better than middle school." She thumps the highly caffeinated and sugar-loaded drink onto the desk decisively. "What're you guys up to?"

"Gossiping about our fellow classmates, of course." Suki inclines her head inconspicuously towards the two that are the current topic of discussion, "Have you ever spoken to either of them?"

"The one with brown hair talked to me once. Asked me if I knew where 'Mio' was. But I had no idea who she was talking about." Kaori takes a swig of her drink, "I'm guessing that's the girl she's with?"

The other two nod. "You know, I don't think I've ever heard her talk," Kaori observes.

"Well, she's talking now," Miko points out.

And indeed, part of the pair's conversation drifts over towards them. "Ritsu, I shared half of my bento with you yesterday."

"So why not today?"

"Because I'm not going to encourage your behavior."

"Oh, come on!"

Suki scrunches her nose at the vegetables in her own lunch and shifts them to one side. "I almost talked to her once in the library. She was sitting by herself at a table. I was going to ask her about a homework problem."

"Why didn't you?" Kaori inquires as Miko peers over at Suki's lunch, looking for anything to take for herself.

"Well, I…I didn't want her to think I was stupid."

"I went to middle school with her. She's not that mean," Miko says, deciding that her friend won't miss her quarantined broccoli.

"Still, she's not the kind of person you just walk up and start talking to. And before I could pluck up the courage to ask, her friend came."

"Tainaka-san?"

"Yeah. I've actually never seen her with anyone else."

"You still could have asked," Kaori maintains.

"I guess," Suki confesses, "But then Tainaka-san got kicked out of the library for being too loud and Akiyama-san left with her."

"How about three-fourths today, then?" they hear Ritsu ask.

"Ritsu…"

As the three of them watch, the shorthaired girl makes a sneaky snatch towards the food, but Mio slides the box away from her with one hand and finishes raising her chopsticks to her mouth to take a bite of rice without so much as blinking.

"Don't you like me?" Ritsu asks, voice crafty.

"…Yes," the agreement comes a bit reluctantly.

"_So_," she says and nothing more, as if the statement is sufficiently convincing in and of itself.

"Our friendship is not…" she pauses here, "well, _should_ not be contingent on such trivial and materialistic things," the black-haired girl counters the undeveloped argument.

"It will be. I'll be dead!"

Mio grasps the implication that Ritsu is going to starve to death, and therefore cease being her friend, without one day's worth of lunch: "Feed yourself. I'm your _friend_, not your mother."

"You always tell me it's important to be consistent," Ritsu forgoes a rebuttal and circles back to her original refutation without warning.

Mio is not perplexed by the illogical jump and understands that she is picking up from _So why not today?_

"Yesterday was an exception since you skipped breakfast too."

The conversation continues on in this ludicrous fashion and soon becomes ridiculously hard to follow because of Ritsu's sporadic thought processes, and explanations are nonexistent since Mio seems to lack any need for clarification. Towards the end, in a rather impressive feat of dialogue, they manage to segue into mathematics.

"It's like a… fifty…five percent tax?"

"Wrong. Sixty-two point five percent."

"Wha—? How do you know that?"

"Five-eighths of two bentos, and you know a quarter is twenty-five percent, so one-eighth is half of that: twelve point five. Adding that to fifty percent equals sixty-two point five."

Ritsu ditches all logical appeal—recognizing she is by far outclassed—and tries for unadulterated pathos. "C'mon, Mio! Please?"

The well-practiced plea doesn't seem awfully convincing, but it somehow manages to work. "Fine, fine. Now let go of my hand already," Mio sighs, wiping her chopsticks clean on a napkin and pushing the lunch back towards the center of the shared desk.

"Itadakimasu!" Ritsu cheers happily.

"They're a little…strange, aren't they?" Miko says, and her two companions pass judgment similarly with nods of assent.

The trio of eavesdroppers turns back to their lunches and Ritsu digs heartily into the remaining portion of Mio's with such zeal that it is not difficult for the curl at the corner of her lips—surfacing as she watches her friend eat—to pass unnoticed.

"…Slow down before you choke."

xxxx

They actually get quite far towards practicing that day.

"Mugi, can you give me an E?"

Their pianist happily complies, pressing the white key down as Mio plucks her string, listening carefully and matching the pitches. She then tests the intervals between all four strings, twisting the pegs to make minor adjustments as necessary. Yui strums Gitah carelessly, humming to herself as she tunes her instrument with a kind of mindless precision that any legitimate musician would deem simply unfair, in Azusa's opinion.

And between Yui's perfect pitch and Mio's relative pitch, she feels just a bit out of the loop with her tuner.

They are all tuned and ready to go when Mugi is called (dragged) away to make tea for their beloved advisor and Yui is suddenly hungry again and Azusa realizes that this is as far as they're going to get for the day. She puts her guitar away morosely and settles for watching the scuffle that ensues when Ritsu tries to braid Mio's hair.

"How's the Light Music Club?" Jun asks as they both head towards the stairs the next day for their after school activities.

"It's…good. Yeah, good," Azusa says quite lamely. Jun seems to expect more than this, so the guitarist distracts her with a question: "Have you learned a lot from the upperclassmen in the jazz club?"

"Definitely! There's this one girl—a saxophone—who's so cool. She's great at circular breathing—it's incredible! And she helped me with my embouchure too. Apparently I've been too much towards the tip of the reed this whole time, and it's been inhibiting my tone quality."

They reach the second floor landing and Jun turns down the hallway. "I'm going this way. You'll have to tell me more about the Light Music Club some other time. Well, see you later, Azusa!"

She leaves her there and disappears into a classroom. Azusa stands still as everything Jun has said seems to absorb slowly into her brain. Music terminology has never felt so foreign, and the Light Music Club must be influencing her in all the wrong ways.

When Mio enters the clubroom shortly after, she finds Azusa working her way through the most difficult exercises in the advanced guitar technique book. She lets her be, but the unrivaled concentration and impressive display soon becomes hard to ignore, so Mio looks over the freshman's shoulder at the book open on the stand. The current passage actually sounds quite ugly when played correctly, the only redeeming quality about it being the difficult fretting and precise picking required to play it.

It only takes Azusa three tries to play through the entire thing perfectly at the indicated tempo marking. She is apparently not especially satisfied with this, and turns to Mio, "Senpai? What do you think I should work on to improve?"

"Azusa," Mio says with a gentle smile, "you're a very good guitarist. You don't need me to critique you."

"Anything, senpai. Anything at all!"

There is a hint of desperation in Azusa's voice that does not escape her attention. Mio blinks once and focuses her eyes. She can see pieces of herself, who she is and who she had been—it's hard to tell the difference at this distance—in the younger girl. Fragments so small and shattered—_Ritsu, you don't understand at all! You're not even taking this seriously_—that the edges are sharpenough to cut—_Okaa-san, do you think…if Tou-san were here…he'd be proud of me?_

She is not as she was a week ago when she came into the clubroom, cried, and bared her soul to them: there is no confusion and no sadness in Azusa's wine-colored eyes. Instead, perhaps a longing for something like reassurance, an intense drive for acknowledgement and—she looks away from the shards to remind herself that Azusa is not her. That it doesn't matter if she understands these things because she doesn't understand anything at all, really. But Mio can't help wondering if this is how Ritsu—who knows her better than anyone—knew what to do; if her best friend can feel an echoing, familiar resonance from Azusa even if she can't see anything the way Mio can.

And there must be some great irony here at work when Ritsu, who knows nothing of tact and blind to other people's feelings, is better than her at this. That Yui, who understands close to nothing, doesn't need to when she can give comfort with a single hug. Logically, it should be Mugi here, dealing with this. Mugi, who always has the unperturbed calm of a mother, a tasty snack, and soothing words ready.

The bassist once felt the same, and maybe still does—_I thought I'd get it after staying for awhile—_and knows how it feels to need affirmation of purpose—w_hy I was so moved—_because she too has lost faith once before. _ But in the end, I still don't understand!_

She is sharp and observant, and definitely capable of empathy, but Mio will never think herself particularly good at comforting others. But they are something like kindred spirits, though not quite the same because Mio has Ritsu, and what kind of person would she be, if she didn't even try?

Mio closes the book on the stand with a single finger. "Let's not practice."

Azusa looks crushed.

"We're not going to perform either," Mio continues, pulling the strap of her bass over her shoulder, "We're just going to play."

The shorter girl doesn't even have time to get her question out before she starts off immediately, plucking a simple bass line that is noticeably incomplete. Haltingly, Azusa comes up with a two bar answering phrase; it sounds lame to her ears, but Mio passes no judgment and harmonizes with it immediately. The older girl continues the chord progression, and the guitar chimes in with a hesitant melody as Azusa tries to ascertain what key the bass guitar is playing in.

"It's not so much about composition theory or perfect harmonic bridges. Don't think too much," Mio advises as they continue into uncharted territory. The words that come out next are in her own voice, but it is Ritsu that she hears in her mind.

_Just feel._

Five minutes later—because they may be late, but are never far behind—two girls outside the door are peering inside through the window.

Yui contemplates Azusa's beaming face through the small green square at the corner of the window with one eye because Ritsu is hogging the center and won't scoot over. Their newest member looks thrilled with the prospect of having a successful jam session with her senpai.

The strains of music permeating through the wooden doors are nothing they have played before. It sounds unusual with its imperfect harmonies and improvised rhythmic base, but is surprisingly fluent. The two parallel rods across the center of the glass bisect Mio's back in Ritsu's vision except where the black strips of metal blend and become indistinguishable with her hair.

"Hey, Ricchan. Do you think maybe… we're holding them back?"

Yui does not seem to expect an answer, and it is perhaps for the best because she doesn't receive one.

xxxx

"Hi Ricchan."

She is not surprised when she finds Ritsu at her doorstep on Sunday afternoon because for the past two years Ritsu has been making an appearance at least once on the weekends. If she doesn't come on Saturday, then without a doubt she is there the next day. There are few things that are predictable about Ritsu's erratic behavior, but this is one of them.

"Mio-chan!" She looks, as always, happy to be at her house. "What's for lunch?"

This is also unsurprising, since Ritsu makes it a point to show up around feeding time, and even her mother has taken to stocking the house with enough edibles for two children, because her daughter's little friend is capable of consuming _that_ much food.

"I can make tomato onigiri," Mio offers. "Okaa-san showed me how."

"Cool! Where is she? Did she go to work?" Ritsu sits down on the wood floor to pull off her shoes as Mio nods and leaves her in the foyer to find the tomatoes in the fridge.

Mio sets out the rice and other ingredients, deciding to cut the tomatoes first. She can hear Ritsu poking through the house from the next room over. Two tomatoes, she decides, and places them on top of the crisscrossing scars scored in the plastic cutting board. Ritsu sticks her head in just as she finishes cutting the first one into nice even squares.

"You're gonna wrap them in seaweed, right?" Ritsu asks, "They taste better that way."

She grins when her friend points at the nori already sitting on the countertop and retreats back to her exploring. Mio tucks her hair back behind her ear and picks up the remaining vegetable. She presses the serrated blade against the rounded flesh.

And the impossible happens. The tomato rolls, the knife slips with one fell stroke, and there's red on her palm.

She has cut across her lifeline, her loveline, and one lonely sanguine bead slips along the length of her hand to drip onto the floor.

"Ouch," Ritsu observes from the kitchen entrance, called back by the small crash of the cutting board. "I'll get you a bandage. Be right back."

Mio doesn't pay her any attention at all, or else she would find it strange that Ritsu remembers the location of the medical supplies. She is, in fact, incapable of doing anything but stare at the innocently small slit parting her skin.

Her hand twitches and her lifeblood pools crimson, scarlet, vermilion—_red_. Red like the silk threads in her mother's kimono, red like the dog gutted by a car fender, red like the sunsets she loves to watch by herself, red like the tomatoes she is supposed to be chopping. All the color is going to bleed out of her and she won't be anything but a dry, bleached husk, and she'll be dead—but the tomatoes are on the floor and the kitchen is a mess, and more importantly, she promised her mother she'd water the plants—

"Mio-chan? Hey! Where are you going?" Ritsu is pulling at her, and they are both inexplicably crouching on the ground.

"You need to open your hand. Mio, come on, open your hand."

Ritsu is stupid. But she's probably even more stupid, Mio thinks, because even though she is clenching the tightest fist she can manage, the red is still there—she can see it—dripping out of the crevices.

The hum in the air is the sound of the words she cannot hear. She can only think of how the pain is no longer only in her hand because her throat is clogging up and her eyes are beginning to burn. Ritsu's words turn into a persistent buzz as worry begins to creep into her tone. Mio can't even tell if she's quivering or if Ritsu is shaking her by the wrist.

"Don't…don't cry, Mio-chan. It's not deep. You won't bleed to death."

And that's it. She stops, and lets Ritsu unfurl her hand, and she lets her do whatever she wants, because she's going to die and it _won't matter anymore_.

They do have lunch that day, but they don't have anything with tomatoes. They don't have anything red at all. Instead, Ritsu bangs around the kitchen for close to an hour and makes miso soup while Mio sits miserably at the table and stares at the crooked white bandage on her right hand.

Ritsu emerges with the soup and places one bowl in front of an unresponsive Mio. She has to go back to the kitchen to get spoons before she sits down in the facing seat to examine her handiwork. Though yellow is her favorite color, Ritsu is relatively certain that the odd tint shouldn't be in the soup. She gulps down a few mouthfuls of the pasty mixture because it's her own concoction and because she's awfully hungry, but the way Mio compliantly finishes her entire bowl is almost as troubling as the expression in her puffy eyes. So Ritsu reaches over even when she knows she shouldn't, because Mio is vulnerable and doesn't particularly like being touched even on the best of days, but when she reaches for the right, and takes the hand, Mio lets her.

They sit like this for a long time without looking at each other, and they don't know why.

But despite her aversion towards physical contact, Mio can almost forget that she has a bandage on her hand when Ritsu's holding it, and even though it's not particularly comfortable stretching across the table, Ritsu doesn't let go because she can ignore the fact that she's still hungry when Mio gently squeezes her fingers back.

xxxx

"I know your father doesn't starve you," Mio says, looking at her demolished lunch, "so why are you always hungry?"

"I'm a growing girl!" Ritsu answers.

"…Growing," Mio repeats.

Ritsu narrows her eyes, perceiving an insult in the incredulous tone. "Hey. No gloating. You're only like, two centimeters taller."

Mio turns to look at her as they exit the classroom into the noisy hallway. Her gaze starts at her eyes and then rake upwards to the top of Ritsu's head.

"At least five."

"Yeah, right! It doesn't matter, though. I'll be towering over you again in no time!"

"…What are you talking about? I've always been taller than you."

Ritsu makes a frustrated noise. "That's not the point."

"I've noticed that there usually isn't one in any conversations with you."

In a display of juvenile behavior, the brunette only sticks out her tongue in retaliation before skipping away to check out the various club booths.

She moves to follow but a girl with short braided pigtails appears suddenly at her side. "Hi! You're Akiyama-san, aren't you?"

"Um, yes?"

"I'm in your class. I read your essay the last time we did peer editing. It was really good!"

"Oh," Mio replies, immediately reminded of her inability to carry on conversations with unfamiliar people when she fails to come up with anything interesting to say. She's not sure if she's thankful that Ritsu isn't here to make fun of her poor social skills or if she would actually prefer her there to fill in the swiftly expanding silence. Feeling it rude to walk away on that note, she takes a flier from the stack in the girl's hands and pretends to read it to lessen the growing awkwardness. This seems to encourage the other girl into talking again.

"We're the literature club," she explains. "We compile a reading list every semester and try our best to get through it all. We read and discuss the books and authors."

Mio nods dumbly.

"Your essay was really good." They seem to have somehow returned to this. "You did an excellent job analyzing metaphors and exploring their symbolism of the poem. You definitely have what it takes to be in the club."

"Ah. Well…" her eyes dart to the left, casting about for Ritsu.

"So, wanna join?" She looks overly eager, already waving an application form at her, and Mio doesn't know what to say.

Fortunately, there seems to be a developing commotion further down the hall.

"Hey, you're only supposed to take one."

"But it says they're free."

"Oh," Mio says suddenly, glad for the escape. "Er, I'm sorry, I have to go."

After school, Ritsu pulls out a huge stack of papers from her book bag and slams it down on the table in the center of Mio's room. The dark-haired girl turns to look from where she is hanging up her uniform.

"Did you collect those before or after you tried to steal all the free pens from the business club?"

Ritsu rolls her eyes at her friend—though Mio will always be better at performing this motion, perfecting it into an art over the years—and points said pen (and the only one in her possession, since a painful elbow to the ribs forced her to relinquish the rest) at Mio's face, and declares, "Unimportant details."

She doesn't let the subject drop so easily, though. "What were you even planning on doing with seven pens?"

Ritsu ignores this and clicks the writing instrument in a short-short-long rhythm repeatedly. Mio tolerates it for around ten seconds before she leans forward to snatch the offending item out of her grip, but she dances away, holding the pen higher in the air. "Morse code!" she explains. "I'm talking to you in Morse code. Neat, huh?"

Mio almost buries her face in her hands. "You don't even _know_—" she doesn't bother to finish and begins a new thought instead, "Why are you always doing such inane things, Ritsu?"

She pretends not to hear the question since there are more pressing matters at hand. "High school. We're in high school now. We have to find a club to join."

Ritsu stops to look at the writing instrument in her hand. The top nub is loose and refuses to click as she presses down on it. "I think I broke it. Aw, man!"

She throws it to the ground as Mio executes a proper eye roll. Ritsu misses the enlightening demonstration when she flops face first onto the bed. Her voice is muffled as she speaks. "This is why you should have let me take more than one, Mio."

The taller girl deposits the now broken ballpoint pen into the trashcan. "Anyway, clubs. Which one are you going to join?"

"Dunno yet," is the answer. "But we should decide soon."

"We?"

Ritsu sits up suddenly and Mio holds back a sigh as she watches her muss up the nicely folded blankets. "Of course, _we_. Unless… you're thinking of abandoning me, Mio? How could you? Cruel. Cruel! You've shattered my heart!" she wails up at the ceiling as she falls back down.

"Maybe you should try out for the theater club," Mio says, looking at her prostrate form. "You have a certain flair for melodrama and you have no qualms about embarrassing yourself."

Her reply is prompt and sure. "Only if you'll join with me."

"Me? N-No way."

"Whiii-iiiy?"

"You know why, Ritsu!"

"Okay, then the tea club. They just drink tea all the time, right?"

"I'm looking for a club that will help me get into a good university, and you're…well, actually, I'm not really sure what you're doing," Mio begins reading the fliers on the table.

"So? We can still join a club together."

"Yes, but our interests are actually quite divergent."

Ritsu is forced to admit that this is true. She takes joy in the simple pleasures of life: eating, sleeping, wreaking havoc, and teasing Mio, who happens to be more complex and cultured in her own tastes and pastimes. Just as she realizes this, it strikes her that though Mio is on _her_ list, she suddenly isn't quite sure if "putting up with Ritsu" is one of her friend's preferred hobbies.

Thus, Ritsu spends the next two weeks on a self-assigned quest to find a club fitting for both of them. She reports her findings to Mio religiously.

"You don't get a free laptop if you join the computer club, and I don't want to hang out with geeks after school, so no."

"Be nice, Ritsu."

"The photography club seems pretty cool, actually, but they use film and develop all their pictures by themselves, and you happen to a big scaredy cat, so you wouldn't like the darkroom."

Ritsu ignores the splutter of indignation, "And I don't think we should do any sports teams because that requires getting here early and staying late, along with running and sweating, which would suck even worse in the winter."

Mio lets the attack on her bravery slide, "Well, I'm thinking about the literature or cultural club."

"Reading? Meh… what's the cultural club?"

"You learn about cultures and customs of different places, and they go on a trip every summer break. Traveling sounds really exciting, but everyone in the club has to give a presentation on a specific country…"

"Seems kind of lame to me," Ritsu notes.

On Wednesday, she is about ready to give up. "Hey, Mio…" she groans, "How are we ever going to form a band when we can't even join a club together?"

And saying those words, Ritsu comes upon a very important discovery. She doesn't walk home with Mio that day because she is too busy with reconnaissance. It turns out that the jazz club doesn't need a drummer, there are no guitars in band, neither of them plays a wind instrument, and the third floor music room is empty.

Thursday, when both girls have made their decisions, is an ordinary day, but then again, perhaps not.

It's the day Ritsu tears up Mio's application form for the literature club. It's the day Mio calls Yamanaka Sawako pretty, not knowing yet what "skin-deep" really means, and the day Ritsu is decidedly unimpressed by (tempo-lacking, hopeless, clumsy) Hirasawa Yui. It's the day she makes up a false promise so convincing and heartfelt—she really should be in drama—it ensnares Kotobuki Tsumugi completely. It's seven days before the true birth of the Light Music Club—a week from the first strummed chord on a certain Les Paul electric guitar.

It is the day when Ritsu believes she has found the sole interest they have in common, and she clings to it so hard it's a wonder, really, that it doesn't break.

xxxx


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N**

For Little Donkey. Best wishes until your next birthday, mate.

xxxx

_rhapsody_

xxxx

On her eighth birthday, Ritsu comes shortly before noon to play.

"Hey hey," she exclaims as soon as she stops bouncing on the balls of her feet waiting for the door to open. And then, after a pause: "Why're you all dressed up?"

Mio looks down at the handmade and expensive dark blue kimono and then back at Ritsu's inquisitive face.

"My mom gave it to me," she explains. "It's my birthday today."

"Whaaaa?" Mio cringes back at Ritsu's noise of disbelief, reflexively swinging the glass screen door a little more closed. Unfortunately, being made of glass, Ritsu stares at her right through it. "It's your birthday today and you didn't tell me?"

Ritsu pouts at Mio, "I even invited you to _my_ birthday party."

Before Mio can even think of apologizing, Ritsu's sullenness disappears and her face lights up in childish glee.

"Stay here, okay?" She motions with her hands, "Don't move—I'll be right back."

Mio closes the door on Ritsu's scampering footsteps and wonders if she can find a good hiding spot in twenty minutes.

Ritsu is back in ten.

"Did—you—know?" she asks between puffs, her breath misting in the chilly air. "I can get here in five minutes if I run."

She grabs Mio's wrist and pulls it toward herself. She shoves something into her open palm and simultaneously curls Mio's fingers around the object. It feels slick and warm. Ritsu beams happily.

"It's your birthday present! Go on," she chirps. "Open it!"

Mio looks from Ritsu to her closed hand and slowly loosens her fingers to stare at the five-yen coin nestled in her palm.

"…"

Ritsu seems disappointed in the lack of a reaction. "Hey, don't you like it?"

"Thanks?" she tries.

The brunette huffs impatiently and snatches it back from her and dangles it by the yellow ribbon threaded through the hole in the center.

"It's not a regular five-yen coin," she says, affecting a haughty air, as if Mio is stupid. "It's as old as I am, and it's my _lucky _coin. See? That number there's the year it was made."

Mio does not mention the fact that she is much better with numbers than Ritsu.

Finally stepping inside and letting the door swing shut behind her, she drops it back into Mio's hand. "Anyway, it's most definitely lucky, so take good care of it! But don't spend it on accident," she advises. "I did that to my first two lucky coins. That's why this one's got a ribbon."

The birthday girl cannot think of a good use for a five-yen coin that she cannot spend. "Are you sure you don't want to keep it then?"

"Uh uh," Ritsu shakes her head emphatically, her messy hair swinging into her round cheeks. "It's your birthday, and that's my present. Besides, you need luck more than me!"

They stay inside for most of the day. Mio shares her cake—a chocolate one from the shop across the station—with Ritsu, who eats it so quickly Mio feels a little sick. They are watching cartoons on television when Mio's mother wishes her daughter another happy birthday and gives her a kiss before leaving for work. During the entire program with cheerfully drawn animals and absolutely no slapstick humor (Ritsu relents because it is Mio's birthday), her friend is completely distracted.

Ritsu's eyes are sporadically drawn to the dark shimmer of Mio's garment. _Like her hair,_ she thinks before cocking her head at the pattern of waves rolling through the deep blue sea of cloth—silver white stitches of foaming froth.

The whisper of her small stubby digit against the silk as she traces the crests and troughs indiscriminately makes Mio want to squirm. But she doesn't. She tolerates it magnanimously. After all, Ritsu's birthday present is in her hand and the other girl is, for once, being deliberately careful.

Afterwards, Ritsu—having sat still for too long and now a bundle of energy—insists on going out to the park. So Mio bundles up in her winter clothes and they leave the house at dusk. Upon arriving, Ritsu targets the shoreline of the small pond immediately, looking for stones to skip. Feeling sorry for the hapless ducks, Mio carefully leads them out of Ritsu's firing range with crumbs of bread. She is kneeling at the edge of the pond, smiling at the small, fussing birds and watching them peck at the food when Ritsu starts talking.

"I haven't got a lot of time left," she says glumly.

"Time for what?" Mio asks, thinking that the year has just only begun, and that there is time enough for anything.

"For practicing." Ritsu's first stone jumps once on the water before sinking with a small _plunk_. "Soon this pond and all the other ones are gonna freeze. And then there won't be any place left for skipping stones."

The ducks are successfully saved and all the bread is gone, so Mio sits down next to Ritsu's sneakers. The owner of the shoes looks down at her, pausing in the gathering of pebbles.

"I've gotta beat my dad's record," she explains, tossing a reject stone over her shoulder—too heavy. "For number of skips." She doesn't even pick up the next rock because it's not flat enough.

"If I can beat him," she continues, toeing some rocks to the side, thinking they are hiding their better-shaped allies beneath, "he'll give me anything I want."

Her eyes are wide as she looks to her dark-haired friend. "Anything. _Anything_, he said."

"Anything!" she exclaims, twirling in a sloppy circle with her arms thrown above her head as if to indicate the world and everything it. The ducks take flight at the extravagant gesture.

After a moment of silent contemplation, she drops her arms and Mio chooses a stone from the ground for her.

"What do you think," Ritsu's voice sounds hushed now that the calls of the ducks have faded, "I should ask for?"

xxxx

Her father had taught her all the skills important for excelling at elementary school life: how to throw and catch, how to kick a ball, how to skip stones, and how to shoot marbles.

Ritsu's father had never taught her how to deal with shy, pretty girls like Akiyama Mio.

On that day, when she sees Mio shoulder her backpack and walk away down the sidewalk, she scrambles to her feet without taking her shot, elbowing the boy next to her in the ribs in her haste.

"Hey! You can't leave!" he whines. He gestures to the ring scribbled in the dirt encircling a fair number of colored glass spheres, "You can't call quitsies! Else you lose the ones you've got in the ring."

"Sure, whatever," Ritsu says, scooping up the marbles at her knees. "You can keep them," she waves dismissively towards the center of the circle and her abandoned marbles. "I'll win them back tomorrow."

Because spending time with Mio is infinitely better than winning marbles from the wimpy boys in her class who can't even pull off a backspin shot. Not only is Mio the prettiest girl in the grade, but she is also the most fun because of her hilarious reactions to Ritsu's antics.

"Mio-chan!" Ritsu is strolling after her, shoving marbles into her pants pockets. "Wait up!"

The other girl characteristically freezes upon hearing the call. Her right foot is even a few centimeters above the ground as she stops. She doesn't turn around because it's unnecessary—Tainaka Ritsu's voice is distinctive and unmistakable. Besides, no one else really talks to her, so who else would yell her name out so loudly?

So Mio stands, one foot in the air, and wavers, while Ritsu gradually approaches closer. Finally making her decision, the black-haired girl takes her foot and presses it down onto its own shadow. She does not turn. She stares at the small pink bow on her shoe and she listens to her pursuer.

She waits.

But Ritsu is faster, so it doesn't matter really, because she can and will always be able to catch Mio.

Ritsu comes up alongside her, flashes a brilliant smile at Mio's stoic face, and they step off together.

Of course, they do not stay side by side for long. Ritsu is unsatisfied with the steady tempo of their walking and takes to skipping forward, running small circles around her friend, and lagging behind to study discarded garbage on the sidewalk.

The third time she scampers to catch up with Mio, Ritsu strikes up a conversation by waving a small steel ball in her face. Its surface is scuffed and scratched from years of use—she inherited it from her father—and collisions with other marbles.

"Like it? It's my taw."

At Mio's confused expression she explains further, "This is the marble I shoot with. I knock the other marbles outta the ring and I get to keep them. Do you know how to play marbles, Mio-chan?"

The next day, she drags Mio along with her to the game. The boys spend the entire time staring at Mio while Mio stares at the bright glass balls and rolls the one Ritsu gives her in her hands. In fact, they spend so much time staring at her that their shots are even worse than usual, and they don't notice when Ritsu takes her second shot without holding her knuckles all the way down on the dirt the way the rules dictate. They stare at her not so much because of her pretty hair and nice sundress, but because she's a _girl_. Never mind the fact that they see Ritsu nearly everyday—Tainaka, as far as they are concerned, is one of them—Akiyama Mio is a _girl_. Girls play on _that_ side of the playground, with the brightly colored chalk and the hopscotch and the neon jump ropes. They think she is a _lady_, but they are chubby-faced boys whose baby teeth are still falling out, and they haven't a faintest idea what a lady is.

Ritsu is a natural opportunist. She shoots twice in a row, unties someone's shoes, and swipes the bright blue marble that belongs to the boy on her right. He doesn't even notice. She sneaks a glance and everyone is preoccupied with her friend. Smugly, she drops the marble into his upturned hat on the dirt. Ritsu takes the game by storm—even more so than usual—and her loot for the day bulges in her pocket. She realizes soon that she needn't have bothered, as her playmates are too happy to offer Mio their remaining marbles as love tokens before they leave.

But the object of their affections only demurs, shrinking away shyly. The only marble she keeps—black with a corkscrew pattern of red— is the one she had from the beginning. Disappointed, they all still rise to see her off. One of them trips over his shoelaces. Another finds his own marble hitting him on the head.

Mio does not notice their embarrassing clumsiness. In fact, good or bad, she does not notice them at all.

The boys all secretly loathe Tainaku Ritsu a little more after that day.

xxxx

She despises the fourth—the unlucky character—of her name. Hates writing it, especially. It is the result of a childhood of poor fine motor skills and too many strokes. She also hates what it means, what it represents—it is her name, but not like her at all, and it was all her parents' fault, so they must be fittingly punished. Therefore, Ritsu is a wild, troublesome child. Laws, regulations, statutes—she spends most of her childhood in a rampage against her name. A perpetual contest, as if to see which of them would break first.

But Ritsu thinks that Mio has a nice name. Too many strokes and radicals, for sure, but it is elegant and fitting, and what do stroke numbers matter, when it's not Ritsu who has to trace them out painstakingly?

In fact, she likes the second character of Mio's name the best—simplest to write, it only has three strokes (she is still a little jealous). It means "mountain."

Mio has both fire and water in her name, separated by these three simple lines. Three movements to build a mountain. Fire on the left, water on the right, a mountain in between. She peers at Mio and wonders where the water and fire are hidden. She imagines that she can see the mountains already; they are hard to miss, after all. There is something cold, lonely, and awe-inspiring to Mio, something not unlike the snowy crags. She cannot articulate any of this, but the feeling resides within, and she is ruminating—

"Ritsu, are you done yet?" Mio asks.

"Huh? No, wait." Ritsu slides her eyes away and to Mio's answer on the paper.

They are doing math homework together in Mio's room. Or rather, Mio is solving the problems and Ritsu is fumbling along, trying to understand some of the concepts and copying the other's answers when that fails.

And she thought maths was bad in elementary school. Middle school arithmetic is a _perversion_. The teachers are trying to convince her that math is literature and art simultaneously. There are things called "graphs" and each "equation" has a corresponding picture. Pictures and letters. For numbers.

It's all messed up.

She remarks as such to Mio, who only responds, "Yes, but did you at least get the right answer?"

"_Noo_," looking at the correct answer makes her morose. "How comes yours looks like a 'u' and mine's a 'v'? !"

"Wow," Mio says.

"I know, right? This doesn't make sense—"

"I didn't know you actually paid enough attention to learn the full English alphabet."

Ritsu violently stabs the open textbook with one indignant finger. "I know 'x' and 'y,' don't I?" she snarls at the math equation that taunts her with its _letters_. "Did you think I learned the alphabet backwards?"

"Ritsu, you can't just connect the dots any way you like," she is sighing, neck turned to see the other girl's wobbly lines. "Weren't you paying attention? The independent variable in this function is squared. It has to be a parabola. It's only going to look like that," Mio points at Ritsu's 'v', "if there's an absolute value in the equation."

"Grar."

"Which is another reason why you shouldn't just do the bare minimum of three points. If you'd plotted more, it would have been quite obvious it was parabolic." Mio is using her detached teacher-voice by this point.

Ritsu rips up her paper and starts over again.

She is penning her name across the top of the page for the third time when she suddenly remembers her previous thoughts. Mio may be the mountain, but she is nothing but the plain, and not cultivated at all as that first character suggests as she glares down at it.

_Stupid_.

She will burn that detestable name with the fire from her eyes. The field will be scorched and the well will dry up and there will be a flaming pit—

Mio speaks. "I'm running out of graph paper because of you, Ritsu."

Ritsu stops because she suddenly realizes what the odd nagging feeling is.

Mio hasn't called her "Ricchan" for the past two days. Though not a first, the dropping of the suffix has never been consistent. She looks sharply up at Mio, who is watching her, chin propped on a hand.

"What?" Mio glances at the three characters on the page. "Forget how to write your own name, Ritsu?"

She sticks out her tongue. "No."

She writes to prove her wrong.

And suddenly, suffering through those nine lines isn't quite so terrible anymore.

xxxx

For Azusa, time spent with Yui is like time spent on the beach—all exhilaration and excitement with sand in uncomfortable places, daylong and thoughtless gamboling ending in sweet exhaustion and sunburns at dusk. Being with Mio feels like midmorning on a cool autumn day with only small breezes and the fallen leaves underfoot to share the feeling of inexplicable and subtle satisfaction.

Yui… Yui _gives_. She gives her hugs and pet names and a lot of anxiety. There is so much to take that Azusa is not sure what to give to her fellow guitarist. She doesn't even know what she wants when it comes to Yui.

Her relationship with Mio is simpler in theory and therefore that much more difficult in practice. Azusa wants recognition from the bassist, wants encouragement and criticism, and more than anything else, she wants to prove herself.

And right now she is proving herself to be an anxious underclassman that is barely avoiding stumbling over her own words.

"My parents know a left-handed guitarist. He, um… comes to their concerts sometimes. And, well, you should come to one sometime too, Mio-senpai, if you have time. I can get you in for free since they're, well, my parents."

"Wha—? Really? Oh, but I couldn't, Azusa. I'd feel bad about not paying, especially since they're so popular."

"O-oh, it's no trouble, really!"

"But wouldn't you rather invite Yui? She might be able to learn something from the musical experience. I know getting four people in would be too much trouble…"

"Oh. Well…" and she looks embarrassed and a little shy. "It's just… I kind of wanted you to come, Mio-senpai." There's a barely noticeable emphasis on the second person pronoun.

And they pause outside the door of the club and Azusa is smiling, all timid hope written over her face. Mio reaches out and agrees silently as she pats the younger girl's head.

The doors are suddenly flung open.

Mio snatches her hand back in surprise and they both turn to see Sawako-sensei looking too pleased and too innocent, and Ritsu beaming from next to her. And there's a rustle of cloth between them, and then they see cat ears and frills, and a _tail_.

"If we run…" Mio starts, looking at the objects as a condemned prisoner might regard the gallows.

"…In opposite directions," Azusa continues, nodding grimly.

"One of us might get away."

And they're off.

Azusa sprints down the stairs, her hand squeaking against the brass turtle's shell on the stairwell turn as she whips in a half circle, the flight of steps decreasing by two's in her hurry. She is catching her breath in the far corner of the girl's bathroom, by classroom 2A, when the door swings open and Ritsu nonchalantly strolls in.

"Come quietly," the drummer declares in true dramatic style, leaning against the door, "and I'll talk Sawa-chan into dropping the tail."

Azusa huffs, deliberates, finally relents and goes with the club president.

"Why did you come after _me_?" she wants to know, thinking that even if she is easy prey, there should be little reason for Ritsu to prefer her to Mio for her daily amusements.

"What's that? Are you complaining?" Ritsu jostles her slightly. "You should be _thankful_. Sawa-chan is a lot scarier than I am."

"I guess…" the younger student cranes her head a bit, but only catches a glance of Ritsu's bangs.

"And Sawa-chan has these crazy moves! She can sprint in high heels and do a midair dive-flip-roll!"

"Really."

"It's the truth!" People are staring at the duo as they make their way back to the third floor. Ritsu has decided there is only one proper way to march a captured prisoner of war to the prison—in a headlock.

The music room is ominously silent as drummer and guitarist stand outside. Ritsu does not relinquish her hold as she stares through the glazed glass and battles with herself.

It is not the question she wants to ask, but: "Hey, why do you think I'm sketchy?"

Headlock, coercion, scandalous outfits, scheming with an unreliable teacher… Azusa wishes she could somehow capture this moment and shove it in her face.

"I… I can't answer that, Ritsu-senpai…"

The brunette has an uncharacteristic expression on her face. It might even be a pout, but Azusa cannot tell for sure since her head is currently at an awkward angle.

"But even if you're sketchy, Mio-senpai likes you, so I guess you can't be that bad."

"What's that mean? !"

"Uh, nothing! Just… that, Mio-senpai seems like the kind of person who would be afraid of sketchy people."

Right. Of course.

xxxx

"It wasn't that bad."

The wailing does not diminish in the slightest.

"Really. It's nothing to be upset about. Geez, I bet everybody thinks you did it on purpose! … …Mio. …Oy, Mio. HEY! I can't concentrate if you're making such a racket!"

At least the sobbing dies down, but Mio's still curled up on her bed rocking back and forth in despair, muttering choked words to herself. Ritsu rolls her eyes and turns to her advanced algebra book.

But it looks like gibberish. "Mio, come help me with this."

No response.

Ritsu crouches next to Mio, and can make out her mumblings, barely. It's a repeated mantra, panicked and despairing, consisting of "no one will marry me now," and "panties."

The drummer contemplates leaving the broken girl alone long enough until she fixes herself, but finding that Mio's immobilizing self-pity to be detrimental to her schoolwork, Ritsu decides that now is the time for desperate measures.

"Mio," she intones solemnly and places her hands flat on the covers of the bed to lend more credence to her declaration, "if nobody marries you, then I will."

Mio looks up at Ritsu's grin, her eyes wide and still sparkling with tears. Rtisu nods encouragingly, pleased with her success.

She figures she can push her luck a little. "But only if you learn how to make tea like Mugi and buy me pastries all the time."

Mio is silent long enough that Ritsu, hopeful, starts nudging her math textbook into view. She pats her hand reassuringly and tries for her most comforting expression while Mio stares at her for three measures of their heartbeats in common time. And then she opens her mouth and lets out her loudest wail yet. Ritsu's eyebrow twitches down in irritation.

"Uwah! No! That's no good at all! I can't be married to _you_! You're messy, lazy, forgetful, and irresponsible!"

Ritsu sighs, "And you say these things as if you haven't put with me for years."

Mio sobs in desperation and feeling more exasperated than slighted, Ritsu picks up a discarded manga and pushes her textbook out of the way. There really is no point in studying when Mio is like this.

xxxx

Ritsu is quite immune to Mio's aesthetics. It's probably something like desensitization, she wagers, since she's seen her just about everyday since elementary school. She has moved past being charmed speechless by random bouts of cuteness, and has long since begun exploiting Mio's looks for her own benefit, although to questionable success. It's only when Mio is exceptionally adorable or when Ritsu has been caught unawares does she find herself hopelessly ensnared. And sometimes, when Mio is just _too_ _Mio_, she can't quite help it.

And as for Mio herself, she doesn't have quite enough self-confidence to be properly shallow, and she wonders if it's just in Mio's nature to finds things cute to less extremes as most girls, because she doesn't fawn the way Yui and Mugi do, and it's a small point of pride for Ritsu that Mio has only ever used "-chan" with her name, and that stopped at the beginning of middle school.

Ritsu, elbows raised and fingers laced behind her head, sees her across the street, back from some errand probably, though she's empty-handed. Her instinct is to cross the street and throw her arm around Mio's shoulder hard enough to knock her off balance. But today, maybe she'll sneak up behind her and scare her. _That_, Ritsu thinks to herself with a smirk, _would be a good laugh._

And she's taken one step off the curb when Mio pauses, and turns around inexplicably. There is no car horn, no barking dog, no call of her name, so Ritsu has no idea what Mio looks back for. Maybe she heard something, because Mio is always hearing things Ritsu can't—those silent melodies that she isn't privy to.

Mio steps back, her foot crossing the midline of her body, and she turns, but it's really a dancer's pirouette, with the weight of the rotation on the ball of one foot and the way her body torques with an effortless grace. It's twilight and the embers of the sun cast streaks of gold in her long hair as it whips, in a perfect arc, behind her. Her face is calm, her eyes serene. The dark curtain of her hair settles softly against the back of her school jacket. Ritsu has that same jacket. In fact, she's wearing it now, but they couldn't be more different. Mio looks windward, and the breeze ruffles her pleated skirt gently in appreciation. Ritsu feels the air, stale and dead, around herself. The angles of her face are perfect in the gathering dusk; the shadow slants across her body and the darkness only adds to the effect. Mio is all poise and elegance. And it's been awhile since her breath has been taken away like this.

And it's so… so _clichéd_.

But leave it to Mio to be able to make a cliché look classic.

Mio doesn't see her. Of course not.

For no reason whatsoever, Ritsu remembers—because she has realized it long ago, and has most definitely accepted it—she'll never be as smart as Mio, nor as beautiful, nor as _tall_. Is it wrong that the last one bothers her most?

There's a ghost of a smile on her face and Mio closes her eyes, turns again, and continues down the sidewalk.

And of all the smiles Mio has given her—and Ritsu, no doubt, has seen more of them than anyone else, of this she is sure— this is not one of them either.

Ritsu retracts that step, her heel clipping on the dry asphalt, and stands on this side of the street. She turns around too, her hair too short to flip.

xxxx

It's one of those days. She wakes to her brother's shout and not her alarm.

"Nee-chan!" he calls from a floor below, "You're not up yet? You're going to be late!"

When Ritsu bolts out of the door five minutes later, taking the bus is not an option. Dashing down the sidewalk instead, she hurriedly pulls a hand through her hair before slipping on her headband. Her hurried sprint is only halted by a legion of cars at the pedestrian crossing. Catching her breath, she checks the time on her phone.

Her only warning is a peal of thunder before the rain comes. The droplets cascade off the plastic of her cell phone as the backlight dims. She closes it and drops it back into her schoolbag. If she's not late, she'll be wet. Of all the days, today, when she is supposed to present her project with Yui and Mugi. She dully holds the bag over her head as the sign changes. Pausing at the other side of the walk, she hears her things clatter inside the waterproof nylon as she shifts her grip to hold the bag more closely over her head, already feeling the back of her hair dripping water onto her neck. Staring ahead as if gauging distance, Ritsu briefly contemplates dashing the rest of the way to the school, but puddles are already forming in the downpour. There's a fair bit of distance to the school yet, and if she runs, the muddy water will splash onto her socks. She doesn't feel like being lectured again today, what with the teachers already giving her enough trouble with not buttoning her jacket.

Thinking of the jacket gives her an idea: if she can keep it dry, she can probably wear it over her shirt and look a little more presentable. She reaches the park and her tardiness is confirmed by the lone person sitting on a bench instead of the usual obediently trudging hordes of students. Ritsu pulls off the jacket of her school uniform and unzips her bag. An arc of lightning streaks across the sky, her hand jumps, and the jacket splashes into the mud.

When she was young, Ritsu had once stayed up past her bedtime with her ear against a door and listened as her father and uncle got supremely drunk with their friends. Because of this, she knows a lot of curse words. She could probably have the foulest mouth of anyone in her class. Now, looking at the rapidly soaking garment, she doesn't know where to start. She's so absorbed she doesn't even notice the person on the bench stand and walk over. The words reach her at the same moment she realizes she can no longer feel the rain pelting on her bare arms.

"I thought you'd forget an umbrella."

She turns and blinks the water out of her eyes.

Mio is standing next to her, closer than usual because the umbrella won't accommodate them otherwise.

Her friend's eyes blink once as they travel over her wet form and then she looks away, into the sky, as if she'd like to count the raindrops. Some of Mio's simple calmness manages to seep into Ritsu and she feels a little better because Mio is with her and Mio is never late. She snags the article from the ground and doesn't ask for how long or why Mio waits.

They walk briskly in silence and it feels like night with the clouds and shadows and the absence of the sun. Under the umbrella now, she drips dry rather pathetically and the wind is cruel as it whips through her blouse. She manages to bump into Mio in her attempts at huddling under the umbrella, but perhaps the other girl realizes it hasn't been a good morning, and says nothing of it.

Mio glances over at her for the first time when Ritsu tries to wring out her garment unsuccessfully just as the school comes into view. "If the stains don't come out after the first time you wash it, you should probably send it out to be cleaned."

The drummer makes a noise like weary anger in the back of her throat as they reach the school and scrubs her cold forearm across her face, slicking off the rain. Mio stops by the entrance to close her umbrella with a click. Watching the raindrops tumble through the air as Mio shakes them out with a flick of her wrist, Ritsu wonders morosely if the teacher will comment on her appearance and attire. She hopes they won't be docked points off their presentation. They reach the lockers, and there are still a few students loitering for the last few moments before the bell. Ritsu shoves the dirtied piece of clothing to the back of her locker with more force than necessary and tosses her shoes in afterward without looking. She clambers into her indoor shoes gracelessly, and is hopping on one foot, trying to pull out the folded heel of the left one when a rustle of dark blue at the corner of her eye causes her to realize that Mio is still standing next to her.

"Here," she says.

Ritsu stares blankly and Mio rolls her eyes. It's a small one done more out of habit than exasperation. She agitates the jacket hanging from two fingers in front of her impatiently.

"Take it. I have an extra in my locker."

Ritsu puts her foot down and the shoe finally slips on properly. She takes it, her fingers fisting the back of the cloth. Mio lets her hand fall and it crumples.

"Hurry up and go."

Tripping up the stairs as she pulls it on, Ritsu shrugs her shoulders in order to make her right arm go in the sleeve. She's not used to nicely laundered, ironed, and folded jackets. Her own are always slightly wrinkled, loose, and floppy. She reaches the top of the steps as she smoothes down the collar, but pauses. Baffled, she looks right and left, and then back down below.

There's no one else around.

She shivers and presses the cloth, still warm, to her arms, rubbing down the goose bumps on her skin. She is still as the last remnants of water drip off her hair onto the polished wood. There is a far off rumble as the rain continues its soft staccato beat on the windowpane. Ritsu pulls up the lapel of the jacket and turns her head to the side, her nose barely brushing the fabric. She exhales softly, and lets it fall back into place, understanding where the wandering scent comes from.

xxx

**A/N**

So… the second season of K-On! came out and finished before I got the third chapter done. And not on the 14th. I feel the shame. Really. You can put down those rocks now…

A special thanks to everyone who has stayed with the story for this long. Hopefully it was worth it. Until the next update, then.


End file.
